To: Ed Driscoll, Frank Bentley, Kevin Driscoll
From: MSGS Group
Subject: Usability testing with paper prototypes
Date: Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Testing Premise
Usability tests of the MSGS system using paper interface prototypes were performed with
two different subjects. Each subject was asked to do a few different tasks:
1. Send a message to their friends in the surrounding area
2. Set their location
3. Change settings to send to a “wider network” than just their friends
We asked users to do the broad task first to test how they could navigate from the home
screen and find the various necessary functions to be able to use the system as a whole.
Then we tested various smaller tasks to flush out some details in our interface.
Observations
Home screen: We have buttons for updating location, starting a conversation, viewing
feed, and for other settings. People found the settings button ambiguous, because it was
unclear what you could modify there since there is a separate “update location” option.
Depending out what other settings we make variable that option could be better labeled or
leaving it generic will sacrifice some clarity to simplify the screen.
We also had an option button on the bottom of that screen. This appears unnecessary on
paper prototypes, but would be more useful on a phone if it was tied to a shortcut key on
the phone to save the user time toggling through options.
Location modification screen: We have a drop down box for favorite locations and
additional buttons for determining location and inputting location. This screen was fairly
intuitive to the test subjects, although it should be clearer that “inputting” means
manually setting your location. Also, users were later confused about how they could
make locations become “favorite locations.” We still need to decide what threshold we
want for this (ie once you use a location 1, 5, 10 times) or if we want to add another
button to this screen so that users can input their own favorite locations.
Conversation screen: This screen was the most cluttered and confusing to the testers.
1. Location – it was ambiguous whether this was a button to set location or a display
of what the location is set as. We intended it to display the location and provide
the ability to reset this, but that would have better accomplished by stating
“Current Location is ____” and having a button to “Reset Location.”
2. Topics – this was clearer than the location interface and easily shows how to
create new topics. The only improvement would be to add a way to add new
topics to the “common topics” list – a similar problem to “favorite locations” in
the previous screen.
3. Send a message – this a text box for writing messages that toggles to a screen
that’s just a large text box. This was intuitive to users, although it would be
beneficial if the toggled-to screen specified the settings from the previous screen
(ie location, topic, and scope).
4. Friends-of-Friends – this was simply a checkbox to specify if you wanted to also
send messages to friends of your friends. This was also intuitive, although made
it unclear what default setting was (we assumed it to be send to your friends only).
This could be improved by having multiple options (friends, friends-of-friends,
single person, etc.) instead of just this one checkbox.
5. Send – a simple button to send the message typed above with the given settings.
This was straightforward, although it might be to have it as one of the shortcut
keys so users don’t need to toggle all the way to it.
Filter Screen: This screen has a comprehensive list of the different filter settings that can
be modified: location range, topic range, and person range (ie friends-of-friends). While
this screen is a little busy, it is fairly basic and the different options are all necessary.
General Conclusions
We found that our interface was fairly straight forward to navigate, but that there were
some times when the testers had to guess the correct next step. These problems would be
easily solved by the solutions outlined above. Overall, we just need to better label our
buttons and more consistently list the current settings when changing settings or sending
messages. These changes should not significantly affect our timeline – they are mostly
superficial and do not greatly affect the concepts of our system.